This Week's OpenAI Controversies and Nvidia's Increased Production of H200 Models

Here are this week's most popular stories:

**OpenAI Faces Crisis as Employees Threaten Mass Exit**

In a dramatic turn of events, Sam Altman was ousted from his position last week, only to return as the CEO of OpenAI shortly thereafter. The upheaval stemmed from a boardroom coup, reportedly influenced by OpenAI's Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever. Following Altman's departure, President Greg Brockman also resigned in protest, sparking significant unrest among the workforce. An open letter signed by 738 out of 770 employees, including Sutskever himself, threatened to resign if the board did not reconsider its decision. Sutskever expressed regret over his involvement in the firing on social media.

Mira Murati stepped in as interim CEO but was shortly dismissed, with Emmett Shear—the co-founder of Twitch—taking over the role. Murati's tenure ended abruptly, as the board accused her of acting contrary to the company's best interests during a turbulent period.

**Rumored Merger Talks Between OpenAI and Anthropic**

Amid the turmoil at OpenAI, rumors of a potential merger with rival Anthropic emerged. Founded by Dario Amodei, who previously worked at OpenAI, Anthropic's leadership dismissed the notion of a merger and any discussions regarding leadership at OpenAI following Altman's exit. Other notable figures, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI CEO Alex Wang, also declined offers to succeed Altman. Ultimately, Emmett Shear accepted the challenge, but his tenure was short-lived as Altman made a swift return.

**Nvidia's CEO Highlights New H200 Chips as the Future of AI**

In a separate development, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang announced ambitious plans to enhance inferencing performance through the introduction of their new H200 chips. Speaking at the ai-PULSE tech conference in Paris, Huang emphasized that these chips can double inferencing performance without requiring any modifications to the existing systems or software stacks. The recent launch of the H200 chips, which succeed Nvidia’s H100 series, promises substantial cost reductions for users, slashing expenses in half. The company also revealed advancements in the Grace Hopper 200 Superchip, significantly expanding chip interconnections from eight to 32 GPUs.

**Meta’s Emu Model Expands to Video and Image Editing**

Meta has unveiled a major upgrade to its first image generation foundation model, Emu (Expressive Media Universe). The model now has the capability to generate videos from text, as well as offering users advanced image editing features. Initially introduced at the Meta Connect event in September, Emu powers many generative AI functionalities across Meta's social platforms, including innovative AI tools for image modification on Instagram.

The new Emu Video model can generate videos based on natural language prompts, images, or both. This model employs two diffusion models—streamlining the video generation process by reducing the complexity involved compared to Meta’s existing Make-a-Video model. Early user testing demonstrated that 96% preferred the quality of Emu Video over Make-a-Video, and 85% deemed it better at adhering to text prompts. Users can even animate uploaded images based on text descriptions.

**AI Startup Roundup: Forward Secures $100 Million for Health Care Innovation**

Each week, we spotlight emerging startups making waves in the AI landscape. This week's focus is on Forward, a health care startup led by former Google executive Adrian Aoun. The venture has successfully raised $100 million to develop CarePods—AI-powered health care units designed for self-service diagnostics.

With a background in special projects at Google, Aoun envisions CarePods located in public areas such as malls, providing on-demand services for disease detection, biometric scans, and blood testing. The startup has attracted notable investors, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, alongside backing from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Samsung Next, and Softbank. Distinguished advisors include Dr. Regina Benjamin, the 18th U.S. Surgeon General, and Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF.

Further developments this week include the launch of a new responsible AI venture capital group and funding rounds for EyeTell and Radiant Security.